Theatre
I You heard it first in The List, folks. A few months back, we commissioned Mark Brown to write an opinion piece about Nikki Millican’s handling of reviewers' access to the National Review of Live Art. Brown was forthright and insightful in his identification of the issues, as far as press were concerned. The first two words of the event are a bit misleading. Perhaps National Unreviewable Live Art would be more appropriate, since Millican has placed such restrictions on access for reviewers that we have frequently found ourselves unable to give our opinions, such as they are, on work that you, the public, must pay to see.
Yet the refusal to expose this work to broader scrutiny seems now to be part of some serious issue for Millican’s New Territories organisation. The recent resignation of Steven Thomson, a senior member of Millican’s organisation, and comments he has made to The Sunday Herald, have highlighted problems of elitism and lack of accountability of this body. Given the £270,000 which New Territories has received from the Glasgow City Council, one wonders how poorly exposed or accessible this event is. It’s the kind of money, per punter through the door, that would provoke a bit of ‘you what?’ from even Scottish Opera. There are a lot of theatres short of cash at the moment. Given that in the same city, the wonderful Citz’ ‘Little Bit of Ruff’ studio season is in danger of being the last hurrah for a wonderful theatrical resource, you have to wonder at funding arrangements.
I Good news for young Rob Evans. still on the happy side of 30. about to have his London debut at the Royal Court‘s Young Playwright season with A Girl in a Car with a Man. It runs from Fri 26 Nov until Sat 18 Dec. Get along and see this bright young talent if you're in London at the time.
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King's Theatre. Edinburgh. Tue 2-Sat
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SCOTTISH DANCE THEATRE coo Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Sat 23 Oct
There are so many excellent components in Scottish Dance Theatre‘s autumn programme that it deserves to succeed unequivocally. Instead it falls ever so slightly short of the usual SDT mark. Forty Minutes, the first new work created by Janet Smith in almost three years, uses the idea of body memory — the scars we’ve picked up that help define who we are — as its starting point. The title refers to a passage in Jeanette Winterson‘s recent novel, Lighthousekeeping, detailing a booth in Grand Central Station which tape records your life in just 40 minutes. The work is performed on a sumptuous cream carpet, supposedly reminiscent of sand. But while it allows the dancers to be a little more adventurous with their leaps and falls, it also seems a little perilous underfoot at times. As both the company’s artistic director and as a choreographer, Smith has talent and intuition, but somewhere along the line this piece loses its crowd- pleasing potential. This is due in no small part to Christopher Benstead‘s score which, apart from the odd flash of beauty, works against the choreography more often than with it.
Liv Lorent’s Luxuria (which once again shows Smith for the astute programmer she is) couldn’t be more different. A range of classical scores — all mercifully easy on the ear - drive the piece along, aided by Paul Shriek’s fantastic costume design. As a choreographer, Lorent thinks squarely outside of the box - nothing here is as you would expect. Moments of passion blend into episodes of silliness. The men disappear under the women‘s vast, billowing skirts, while we figure out if they’re being funny or downright saucy. Flapping their wing—like arms, the dancers never seem to get off the ground, unlike this piece which, given time, will truly fly. (Kelly Apter)